Think Like A Game Designer - Justin Gary — 5 Lessons From 15 Years (#90)

Episode Date: August 21, 2025

At Gen Con this year, we kicked off Ascension’s 15-year anniversary celebration. I had the chance to meet so many fans who have been part of this community for over a decade; the experience was both humbling and rewarding.We just launched the Gamefound Campaign for the Ascension 15th Anniversary Collector’s Edition and I’ve been reflecting on the incredible journey that brought us here. What began as a casual prototype I created to play with friends between rounds of Magic tournaments has grown into a game that connects millions of players around the world.Here are the five most important lessons I've learned, each has transformed Ascension from a prototype to a global phenomenon.Lesson 1: Prototype and Iterate FastWhen I first started working on Ascension, I never expected it to become the success it is today. It was 2009, and I had just quit my job to start my own game company. The funny thing about starting a company is that until you’re making money and collaborating with others, the difference between “CEO/Game Designer” and “guy sitting on his couch” is mostly a matter of attitude.At the time, I had spent over a hundred hours playing the deckbuilding game Dominion. This game pioneered the genre, offering the fun of deckbuilding without the hassle of collecting cards. As a Magic: The Gathering Pro, I loved that it delivered the joy of constructing a deck without buying packs or managing a collection. Eventually, however, the game became predictable. Because each setup of available cards was fixed from the start, I rarely needed to change my strategy. I also found that the game took too long to set up, impacting the ratio of fun to busy work in a way I thought could be improved.The secret to creating Ascension was simple: remove the things from Dominion that get in the way of fun.My first prototype was literally just a shuffled pile of Dominion cards, which instantly cut 20 minutes off setup time. Mind you, this prototype wasn’t good, but it gave me a quick sense of how the gameplay might feel, and I could see a spark of something great there. My next prototype was nothing more than sharpie scribbles on blank cards. Since my prototypes were quick and ugly, I had no problem throwing them out and making rapid changes. That freedom allowed Ascension to go from idea to store shelves in under 18 months.The lesson: Your first prototype should be so ugly you're embarrassed to show it to anyone. That embarrassment is freedom—freedom to fail fast, change everything, and find the fun without falling in love with your first ideas.Lesson 2: When in Doubt, Cut it outMost new designers try to solve problems by adding things to their games. The correct answer is almost always to cut instead.Ascension started by cutting Dominion’s purchase and play restrictions. This streamlined the game and gave players more choices each turn, but also required me to add a second resource [power] to keep tension high. This change was just the start, the biggest cut came much later in development.Ascension’s signature innovation was the ever changing center row, which dramatically increased the variety in each game. At the same time, this mechanic also created the risk of a stalled board state, meaning that if players weren’t able to buy anything from the center, nothing would change and the game would drag on. My original solution was a “conveyor belt” mechanic, where, at the end of each turn, the rightmost card was banished and everything slid down. This guaranteed movement and created tension as cards neared the edge.The problem was that players kept forgetting to slide the cards down. Every. Single. Game.I tried everything: special cards that interacted with the conveyor belt, giant reminder text on the board, entire mechanics to make sliding feel essential. Nothing worked. Then one playtester asked the question that should have been obvious but I was blind to: "What if we just cut that rule?"We shuffled up, played without it, and never looked back. The game was cleaner, faster, and more fun. Did the board stall occasionally? Yes, but we could mitigate that by subtly adjusting card costs and adding banish effects players could buy when needed. In this case, the conveyor belt cure was far worse than the occasional stalled board disease.The lesson: Every mechanic costs mental energy. When facing a design challenge, always ask first: "What can I eliminate to solve this problem?" Remember, "dead now" doesn't mean "dead forever." Cut mechanics make great expansion content later.Lesson 3: Perfect Your Pitch Through RepetitionEvery game needs a killer hook, and the only way to find it is through repetition. Brutal, exhausting repetition.I learned this the hard way at my first Gen Con booth, where we sold the first copies of Ascension 15 years ago. Over the course of the show, you pitch the game a hundred times. You refine, adjust, and figure out what works. By the end, I could pitch and demo Ascension in my sleep. I knew exactly how to get someone hooked, and the moment I no longer needed to be there (for Ascension, it’s usually turn three, when players start seeing the new cards they purchased and get excited about improving their decks).Whenever possible, use things your audience already knows as a reference, combine two familiar concepts, or give a twist to something they’ve seen before. You need to get information about your target audience and customize the pitch to them. Once they’re hooked, you can guide them into a demo and, hopefully, into buying the game and sharing it with friends.In 2010, if I knew my audience played Magic, my go-to pitch was:“Imagine all the fun of drafting card packs in Magic, all with just one lifetime purchase.”If they were familiar with Dominion, an effective pitch was:“Ascension is like Dominion, but with a fun fantasy theme and you can play an entire game in the time it takes to set up a game of Dominion.”If they weren’t familiar with either game category, I would usually start with a more theme forward pitch:“Ascension is a 30 minute card game where you recruit mighty heroes and weapons to defeat monsters and earn honor.”At first, pitching this way feels awkward. You have to train yourself to read the audience, adapt, and take feedback from their reactions. The best games also make it easy for players to teach friends, and those people become your best marketers. The more you practice pitching and running live demos, the more it will shape your design choices, helping you create games that are not only fun to play, but also fun to learn and teach.The lesson: Practice pitching your game early and often. Alex Yeager’s 2-2-2 demo framework is a fantastic tool for game designers (you can hear more about it on my podcast with Alex here). Whether you need a two-sentence pitch, a two-minute overview, or a two-player demo, tailoring the level of detail to your audience is key. This approach prevents overwhelming your audience with too much information at once while still providing a clear and concise introduction to your game.Lesson 4: Know Your Core Tension and Protect ItEvery great game revolves around one central tension that hooks players.* In Uno, you're trying to empty your hand without unlocking your opponents' cards.* In chess, you protect your king while threatening your opponent's king.* In poker, you want to win the pot but must risk chips without knowing what others hold.* In Magic: The Gathering, the one-land-per-turn restriction forces agonizing tradeoffs about which spells to cast.For Ascension, the core tension is this: adapting to an ever-changing market while your opponents threaten to snatch the exact cards you need.The game sings when there are multiple exciting cards supporting your strategy, but your opponent might grab them first. Every choice matters because the board state is temporary. Purchasing a Mechana construct early makes each successive mechana construct better, but if your opponent cuts you off from the cards you need then your strategy could fall apart.Understanding this core tension has guided 15 years of expansions. Every new mechanic is built to enhance this central dynamic, but never replace it. Our newest expansion, Ascension Legends, turns faction choice into a higher-stakes decision than ever with the Legendary Track system. As you climb each faction's track, you unlock powerful bonuses. Suddenly, that “meh” Lifebound hero becomes essential because it pushes you toward a game-breaking legendary power. Multi-faction cards become contested treasures. The tension ratchets up, but the heart of Ascension remains intact.In the 15th anniversary campaign, I’ve designed an entirely new card type that impacts every game called Chronicles. Chronicle cards were an interesting challenge to design, because I wanted to make something that honored Ascension’s history, impacts every game, and could work with whatever expansion(s) you chose to play it with. But I’ve always believed constraints breed creativity and these constraints were no exception. There are 17 Chronicle cards available in this campaign. At the start of the game, you can select any two of them and set them beside the center row. Each one adds a new game rule or unique cards to the game. Each of these 17 cards was designed to highlight one of our previous expansions and compress its impact on the core tension into a single effect. Because they are promos and players can opt in to which ones they want to play with, I also felt more free to make more powerful abilities that I would never put into a normal set. For example, one card representing Darkness Unleashed, where we first introduced transforming cards, adds the rule: “At the start of the game, each player removes one Apprentice and one Militia from their Starting Deck and Transforms them into one Mystic and one Heavy Infantry.” These cards are a great way to radically shake up the game and have some fun reevaluating old cards and strategies in the light of new mechanics. You can learn more about the new card type in our update here.The lesson: Identify your game's core tension in one or two sentences. Write it down. Frame it. Before adding any new mechanic, ask: "Does this enhance or dilute our core?" As your game inevitably grows more complex, staying true to its core ensures it evolves in the right direction.Think Like A Game Designer is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Lesson 5: Create Space for Community and ConnectionAt GenCon, a father approached me with his 11-year-old daughter in tow."I just wanted to thank you," he said. "Ascension has become our special thing. We play together almost every night, and it's given us this amazing way to connect."His daughter beamed and jumped into the conversation, eager to tell me about her favorite faction (lifebound) and the strategies she'd discovered.What struck me wasn’t just their enthusiasm—it was the math. She wasn’t even born when Ascension first released in 2010. Yet here she was, fifteen years later, experiencing the same joy of discovery that’s captivated players from day one. That’s when I realized we hadn’t just created a game—we’d built something that bridges generations.From the beginning, Ascension was deliberately designed to feel less confrontational than other strategy games. You're not attacking other players—you're all racing toward your own goals while your opponent does the same. Only the shared center row and occasional monster effect encourage direct competition.This makes Ascension approachable to partners, friends, and family members who might be intimidated by more aggressive games. I’ve heard from hundreds of players who say Ascension was their entry point into tabletop gaming. Even the partner of a hardcore gamer can enjoy Ascension because even when you lose, you still get to build something cool and feel progression throughout the game.This design philosophy has created a community where parents can genuinely enjoy playing with their children, where couples can bond over evening games, and where someone whose only card game experience is Uno can sit down and have fun within minutes. The rules are simple enough to teach quickly, but the strategy is deep enough to reward returning players.The secret to lasting community is making everyone feel welcome at the table. Even competitive card games like Magic have benefited enormously from more social formats like Commander which allow new players to enjoy the experience without as much direct conflict. Even for SolForge Fusion, the game I co-created with Richard Garfield as a very competitive game, we created a campaign mode and storyline tournaments that make players allies against a common cause, helping them root for each other and take on challenges that are less directly antagonistic with other players.The lesson: Your game's community will outlive any individual player if you design it to include rather than exclude, to welcome rather than intimidate, and to create shared positive experiences rather than zero-sum conflicts. Think about how your design allows players of different skill levels to enjoy the journey together. The best victories are the ones you can celebrate with the person across the table, not at their expense.Fifteen years ago, I was just a guy on a couch with a dream and a Sharpie. Today, Ascension connects hundreds of thousands of players across the world—parents and children, partners and friends, veterans and newcomers. As we launch our 15th anniversary campaign on Gamefound, featuring exclusive anniversary editions and the brand-new designs, I'm not just grateful for the game we've built. I'm grateful for the community you've helped us create.I am beyond grateful for the community that has supported the last 15 years, and I can’t wait to continue to grow together over the next 15!Join our 15th anniversary celebration at Gamefound and get exclusive anniversary rewards available nowhere else.— Justin Gary This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justingarydesign.substack.com/subscribe

Hello and welcome to a very special edition of Think Like a Game Designer in this episode. There are no guests. It is just me. And I am here to share with you the five greatest lessons I have learned from 15 years of creating Ascension. Ascension is celebrating its 15 year anniversary with the very first copy sold at JenCon about a week ago exactly as I'm recording this. And we have just launched our 15th anniversary campaign on GameFest. So for anyone that is interested, that is either an Ascension fan or a new player that wants to come and check it out, this is the perfect place to jump on. I have designed over 50 new promos and a brand new mechanic. We have a collector's edition of our original set and a bunch of other goodies, including every single expansion that we have ever made available in an ultimate collector's edition. You can go to GameFound and just search for Ascension or follow the link in our show notes to join in.

every support that you give to the projects I work on is super helpful. And you can even just follow the campaign to see how some of the marketing tips that I talk about on this podcast are applied directly to my own projects. So you can see how we're doing. But whether or not you want to back the campaign, also if you can share it, that's also super helpful. I want to make sure that this episode is interesting and useful to you. So I'm going to talk about the five lessons that I've learned from making Ascension for 15

years and they will overlap with some of the lessons that other guests have talked about and share some new stories here as well. So without further ado, let's get going. At Gen Con this year, we kicked off the 15th anniversary celebration, and I had a chance to meet so many fans who have been part of this community for well over a decade. The experience was both humbling and rewarding, and it's given me this real opportunity to reflect on something that started off as just a casual prototype that I made so I could play with my friends in between rounds at magic tournaments,

and is now grown into a game that connects millions of players around the world. So let's get into the five lessons that I think helped, turn Ascension from that little prototype I was working on in my spare time into this movement that has now connected so many players around the world. Lesson number one. Prototype and iterate fast. When I was first working on Ascension, I never expected it to become the success of this today. So we're looking at about 2009.

I just quit my job working at Upper Deck Entertainment, working what was in essence, a dream job, working on the World of Warcraft Ministers game and the versus System trading card game to start my own company. And a lot of people thought I was crazy. The economy had just collapsed recently, and I wasn't really 100% sure what to do. And, you know, the funny thing about starting a company is that, you know, when you're not really making any money,

and it's just you, the difference between being a CEO and game designer versus a guy sitting on his couch, well, it's more a matter of attitude than reality. Now, at the time, I had spent over 100 hours playing the deck-building game Dominion. This game is the one that pioneered the deck-building genre, and it kind of offered the fun of building a deck without all the hassle of collecting cards. Now, in my former life,

I was a magic gathering pro tour player, winning US national championships, world team championships at a pro tour. And since I didn't really have a ton of time for that in my life, the fact that I could get the joy of like building a deck and that strategy without the hassle of buying cards and managing a collection was really awesome. But after playing the game a ton,

I realized that Dominion started to become kind of predictable. See, at the start of each Dominion game, you set up the different 12 piles of cards, and once those are set up, that is fixed as what's available for you to use to build your deck. And so once I had seen a certain pattern once or twice, I didn't need to adjust my strategy. I pretty much was on autopilot mode from the start of the game till the finish.

In addition, setting up all of those piles of cards took a really long time, so there was a lot of busy work in between the bouts of fun that I got to have. So the secret to creating a essential was really just, can I get rid of the things that get in the way of fun for Dominion and provide a different type of experience? So my very first prototype was just, just a shuffled pile of dominion cards. Instead of setting up all the different piles of cards separately,

I just shuffled them up, dealt them out into a center row, and started playing. Now, this was not a good game. Let me be very clear. Dominion cards are not designed for this. The game had a lot of problems, but I got to see the seed of the fun, right? I got to see that there was a spark there.

And so that gave me enough incentive to say, okay, let me try to make another prototype. And now that second prototype was also really ugly. I just wrote on Sharpie on blank cards and wrote down some quick designs and then started playing that way. And the nice thing about keeping your prototypes ugly and simple is it's very easy to iterate. I had no problem with ripping up a card, crossing something out, changing something.

So every single day, I would update my prototype. And then at the end of the day, I would find whichever friends when they got off work would co-and be willing to play with me. And I would test it with them. And then I would change a bunch of stuff mid-game and then do it again the next day. And I kept iterating. And only as I started to get better feedback that I then, you know, make some nicer cards with art and start to work on theme. And that process of rapid prototyping got me from the initial idea of Ascension to store shelves in under 18 months.

And that's an incredibly fast amount of time for a game like that, especially because I also had to, you know, start a company and figure out how to get things made and all that stuff at the same time. So the core lesson here is that, you know, your first prototype should be so ugly that you're embarrassed to show it to anyone. Because that embarrassment is a freedom. It's a freedom to fail fast. It's a freedom to make rapid changes. And it's a freedom to find the fun without falling in love with any of your first ideas. I cannot tell you how many game designers approach me with something where they've got a beautiful looking prototype.

They've clearly invested many, many hours in, and there's something fundamental about the game engine that doesn't work. And so they've wasted all that time. They often will get discouraged, and the game will die on the vine. So keep your prototypes simple, keep them ugly, prototype, and iterate fast. That's lesson number one. Lesson number two. When in doubt, cut it out. Most new designers try to solve problems by adding things to their games.

and the correct answer is almost always to cut instead. So, Ascension started by cutting Dominion's purchase and play restrictions. In Dominion, you were only allowed to play one action card a turn. You were only allowed to buy one card a turn, and I felt like that was, again, constraining on the speed and flow of the game. Now, I removed those things, and it did add some challenges in order to make the game interesting. I had to add a second resource.

So there's both ruins in Ascension and Power. Powers used to kill monsters. Rooms is used to buy cards for your deck. So that keeps attention high as you're not sure. which side do you want to go. As the center row has more monsters, maybe you want more power. But if other people have more power, maybe you want to wait them out. So when the board shifts, it creates that interesting tension.

But it did it in a more organic way without a rules restriction. But the real thing that was interesting about ascension is every time you try to make a new innovation, there's going to be some challenges that come with it. Every core system has its own flaws. And Ascension's signature innovation was the ever-changing center row. Instead of setting up 12 piles of fixed cards like a dominion, Ascension has a six-card center row that every time a card gets, purchased and new one gets flipped off the top.

So it's a lot more variety, a lot more different things that can happen. I likened it to, you know, Dominion may be simulating the constructed experience of magic, but Ascension was more simulating the drafting experience of magic, so a lot more variety. But the problem is that sometimes that variety could lead to some stuck board states, where there's a bunch of cards that nobody can purchase and everybody gets stuck buying the kind of boring side cards and nothing moves. And so in the original version of the game, I had a conveyor belt mechanic, where at the end of each turn, the card that was on the rightmost would get destroyed and sent to the banish pile,

and then all the cards would slide down and a new card would come up. And this was really cool because it made sure that the board moved. It created some more tension. You might prioritize the cards on the right side first, or maybe you would take a card on the right side and cut off a card that somebody else would lose before it got back to their turn. There's a lot of really cool gameplay that came out of this. There was just one problem. Everybody kept forgetting to slide the cards down and do this. Like every single game, players would just forget to do the thing that they needed to do.

So my solution was, okay, let me add more stuff, right? This was the classic new designer problem. I added in special cards and interacted with the conveyor belt. I added a giant reminder text on the board. I added a bunch of mechanics to make that process of moving the conveyor belt feel essential. And none of it worked. And I'll never forget. It was one of our playtesters who asked the question that should have been obvious to me, but I didn't think of,

which is, hey, what if we just cut that rule? And easy enough to prototype and test it. let's go. We shuffled up. We played without it. And I never looked back. The game was instantly cleaner, faster, more fun. Yes, sometimes the board does stall in the game of Ascension. But I reduced the cost of cards. I mitigated it by adjusting and adding a few cards that let you strategically manipulate the center row. Again, letting the card pool do the work rather than new rules do the work. And the game was just way better. So cutting things and sometimes being willing to let some negatives in your game stay because in this case, the cure for the stalled center

row was far worse than the disease. So the core lesson is, you know, every mechanic you have in your game costs some amount of mental energy. You're adding complexity. You're adding challenges. So whenever you're facing a design challenge, before you add more stuff, always ask first, what can I eliminate to solve this problem? And something that really helps me with this is remember that just because you cut something doesn't mean it's dead forever, right? A lot of the best things, a lot of the things I cut from the original game of Ascension got added as mechanics later on. Like, for example, trophy monsters, where normally in Ascension, whenever you kill them, monster, you get a reward right away.

Trophy monsters would stay in front of you and you could cash in that reward whenever you wanted, which is a really cool mechanic, but just unnecessary for the complexity of the first release. And so I introduced it later in a feature set. So, so this can help psychologically because everybody falls in love with their babies and you love these core mechanics. So this is one way that you can kind of help take the pressure off, just write it down, save it for later.

Great expansion content. All right. Lesson number three, perfect your pitch through repetition. games do not just succeed on the quality of the game. You've got to be able to get people hooked. Every game's got to have a killer hook, and the only way you can figure out what yours is is through repetition, like brutal, exhausting repetition.

Like when I pitched this game at first to distributors and retailers at Gamma, and then at Gen Con when I first sold it, I gave the demo and the pitch for the game like hundreds of times, and I kept refining and adjusting and seeing what works so that I could pitch and demo ascension in my sleep. I'd probably done it thousands of times now. but I knew exactly how to get someone hooked and I knew the moment that I no longer needed to be there, right?

So in Ascension, because you start with a basic deck of cards, you'll spend two turns buying new cards, then your deck runs out. You shuffle your deck and you get access to your new cards and that's when people, the magic would happen. I could see the light turn on people and I could let them run and they were hooked on the game. So you want to know where is your hook point

and then you need to also know where your elevator pitch is and how you're going to refine that based on your audience. So an elevator pitch, I've talked about on the podcast before, but it's basically, you know, two sentences, something really quick that can get somebody hooked, and that will get them to want to want to play the game. And so in my, you know, in the early days where deck building games were not as popular, I would use other references. So if I knew my audience knew how to play magic, my pitch would be, imagine all the fond of drafting cards and magic, all with just one lifetime purchase, because I know

people love drafting magic. And they also feel the pain of like every time I want to draft magic, I've got to open up buy new packs. It's a very expensive hobby. If they did know Dominion, they already knew a deck-building game, then I would compare it to that. Okay, Ascensions like Dominion, but with a fun fantasy theme, and you can play an entire game in the time it takes to set up a game of Dominion. Again, I'm relating it to something they know, and I'm showing them the twist, and usually that twist is solving a pain point or solving a problem.

And if they didn't know either of those things, then I would just reference it more broadly. Acension is a 30-minute card game, where you recruit mighty heroes and weapons to defeat monsters and earn honor. Less about the core mechanics, but you know it's a card game, you know it's short, and if that theme sells you on it, great, now I'll hook you and get you into the game itself. Now, at first, this pitching feels really awkward.

You've got to train yourself to read your audience, adapt, take feedback from their reactions. And this is why I love going to conventions like Gen Con and having as many in-person like pitches and demos to people who are not your friends. So you can see how they react. You can see what works. So the best way to do this, and this is the core lesson, is you've got to practice pitching your game early and often. As you're working on your game, the way that you market it, the way that you, your hook,

and the way that your elevator pitch is going to be should be informing your design. because even a great game that you can't actually communicate to someone and sell them is not going to be a game that's successful. For more on this, I do recommend you listen to my podcast with Alec the Eager. He has a 2-2-2-2-demo framework, which is fantastic. It's like a two-sentence pitch, two-minute overview, two-player demo, where you can tailor the level of detail to your audience. It's a great deep dive on it that's definitely improved my demoing process since then. Lesson number four, know your core tension and protect it.

Every great game revolves around one central core tension that hooks players. And the key here is by understanding what your core tension is and that thing that's going to frustrate players and create that tension, then you get to know the fun that they feel when they release that tension, they resolve it, they win, or the pain and agony of defeat. So in Uno, you're trying to empty your hand by matching the colors and numbers of the cards in the center pile without accidentally unlocking your opponent's cards and letting them go out before you.

In chess, you're trying to capture their king, but you're also trying to protect your king, and so the tension is trying to balance that offense and defense. In poker, you want to win the big pot of chips, but of course you have to risk your chips, and you don't know what other players hold. And in a game like Magic's Gathering, the one-land per-turn restriction forces these trade-offs

that make your spells hard to cast, so you can have to tension between, do I want to play with low-cost cards or high-cost cards and more lands and how many colors do I play? Everything in Magic revolves around that. For Ascension, the core tension is adapting to that ever-changing center row, and your opponents are fighting over those same cards.

So everything that increases the tension of making cards and helping me to reevaluate cards differently and value the cards that you want and vice versa is where the real game sings. And so everything that I've done as I increase my releases of ascension and we have over 17 standalone expansions and a brand new mechanic and a brand new card type we're introducing in the crowd fund campaign

that we're launching on GameFound, every one of those things is designed to focus on that tension or to create some kind of countertension. Our newest expansion of ascension legends, which will be coming to retail in October, and also will be coming to the app as well, which is big news because we haven't had an app update in a very long time.

That adds the idea of a legendary track. And so every faction that you buy, whenever you buy a card faction, you move up that track. And then at certain tiers along the track, there's a legend that gives you a boon, a special power as you move up the track, including a really powerful one at the very top. And so you might change the way that you value

cards in the center row because, hey, I don't necessarily want this lifebound card, but I'm really far up the lifebound track, so maybe I'll take it, or maybe my opponent is just about to hit the top of the lifebound track, so I'll take it away from them. And so those cards that you might have not valued now suddenly are valuable, and do you work on building your deck the best you can, or do you work on maximizing the legendary track? And that creates fun tension that aligns with the core of the gameplay. And so every time you're working on expansions, to make a game that's going to last 15 years and 17 plus expansions and who knows how many promo cards, knowing that core tension is absolutely critical.

So this ties into the cool new card type that I've introduced in Ascension in the 15th anniversary campaign called Chronicles. And for those of you who are way back fans, you will remember that Ascension, the core set was originally called Ascension Chronicle of the Godslayer. And we ended up dumping that name because, you know, we wanted to sell the game in places like Target and they weren't crazy about the godslayer name. So, so be it. But being able to call these new card type Chronicles is a little callback for those

of you to honor Ascension's history. And the mechanic, I wanted to do promo cards that would work with any set that would honor Ascension's history and that would have a big impact on the game without having to have a ton of cards, like without being a full set. And so this is a lot of interesting challenges and constraints, but constraints breed creativity. And so what I was able to do is they set of these cards. There are 17 of them. You can flip any two of them.

And they create new game rules that apply to the whole game. So they can radically alter the game. and each one is designed to appeal to a specific set and the mechanic of that set. So, for example, in Darkness Unleashed, we introduced the mechanic that you could transform your cards. If you meet certain conditions, your cards transform from weaker cards into more powerful versions. And so this card would say at the start of the game, each player transforms one of their apprentice and one of their militia into a mystic and heavy infantry, cards that are twice as good. And so you get to start the game from a much more aggressive point.

It calls back to the idea of transforming, but it would work with any set that you play. it with. And it also is a pretty amazing ramp up and pretty busted. So you wouldn't want to play this every game, but as a promo that you can cycle in and out, it's perfect. So this is a really fun new mechanic. It was great to get to design. And again, it's a fun way to play within the space that a promo set and a 15th anniversary set allows. But the core of it and the core of this lesson is that I always keep that core tension in mind. So whenever you're working on a game, understand the game's core tension and be able to describe it in one or two sentences, just like you can with an elevator. pitch and really focus on that. And every time you want to add something new, you have to ask yourself the question, does this enhance or dilute the core tension? And if it dilutes the core tension, it's probably not the right thing for your game. It's probably a good mechanic for another game. If it enhances the core tension or creates something that pulls against it, then you've got

something that's exciting and can be worth doing. And you can take an audience with you that has something that they love, whatever the core experiences of your core game is, and take them on a journey to have all kinds of crazy things, like Ascension has a pirate set and a set where it goes from day to night and the legends that I just described all kinds of fun things we've done, but every single one of those things plays back to that core tension. And the final lesson, lesson five, create space for community and connection.

So one of my favorite moments at Jen Con was when a father approached me and he had his 11-year-old daughter with him. And he said he wanted to thank me because Ascension was the way that he bonded with his daughter, that they played together like most nights, and this was a big way that they connected. And his daughter was there and she got excited and she told me about her favorite faction and all the lifebound characters. she loved and it was really fun.

I mean, it was great. Anytime I get to see anybody that talks about, you know, the games that I make and is excited about it, that's fantastic. But I realized that she wasn't even born when Ascension was made. And now have that bond between father and daughter is something that is just so powerful for me. And, you know, when I first started playing, I would play games with my dad. He traveled with me to my very first magic events.

And it was a real big moment for us that we got to bond. So it's one of the things I love about what I get to do. But when you are building your own games, you know, think about how you're going to make your games connect people, right? There's a lot of the games I make are strategic and competitive, and it's totally fine and totally fun to fight. But Ascension was deliberately designed to be less confrontational than other strategy games. You don't attack other players directly.

You're basically racing towards your own goals and your opponents doing the same thing. Only the fact that you're competing over the same center row cards and occasional monster rewards actually encourage direct competition. And so what this has meant is that Ascension was a lot more approachable for partners, friends, family members who might be intimidated by more aggressive games. So I've heard hundreds of players tell me that Ascension was their entry point into tabletop gaming. And so the idea that a hardcore player can go deep into strategy and try to maximize

their totals, but that a casual player can still enjoy the game. And it's one of the joys of deck building that you feel that kind of ramp up and growth is really, really fantastic. And this design philosophy really is part of why you can have a parent enjoying the game with their kids or a husband and a wife or one of them may not be as much of a gamer. where it's easy to learn and people who only played games like Uno can kind of learn Ascension

and then get involved in the kind of lore in the world and then join in and jump to other games. So the secret to building a lasting community is trying to find ways to make everybody feel welcome at the table. Even card games like Magic the Gathering, which are very competitive, really only blew up in the last several years because of the commander format.

And the commander format's a multiplayer game where it's kind of a free-for-all so you don't have to necessarily attack the new player. You can team up and you can, bully down the guy that may be a better player. And so that actually allows a more social environment. And Soul Forge Fusion, the game I made with Richard Garfield, it's also a very competitive head-to-head game,

but we also made a campaign mode, and we do storyline tournaments where players are all competing together to help evolve the story and helps you become allies against a common cause. So thinking about ways that your game can not just be a competitive experience, but help people root for each other, is a key part of this lesson, because the game's community is going to outlive any one individual player, who knows, hopefully maybe even me as a designer.

And so making something that's inclusive that creates a shared positive experience, not just a zero-sum conflict, is a key to making your game last and stay on the test of time. So I hope that those lessons were helpful to you. Honestly, doing things like this podcast now has been for many years. We're closing in and we'll be near in our 100th episode soon. When I was at Gen Con, only did people tell me about how much they loved ascension, but also a lot of people came up and talked to me about the podcast. And so this community has grown.

We've got over a million downloads. We've had incredible guests from all different industries. So, you know, your support here is super appreciated listening and sharing has been really appreciated. If you like the work that I do and you can go check out the Gamefound campaign, it's really appreciated. Even if you can't afford to back it or aren't interested, sharing it makes a big difference. So I'm just going to keep grateful to get to keep doing what I'm doing. Grateful to have you as listeners and we'll be back with another amazing guest very soon.